Unpeel the imminent skin,
fissure the smooth beginning with
the knowledge of brows
that will pucker in disbelief,
this is not the face we knew,
this ravaged circuitry is another
way of acknowledging defeat,
who exposed it to our
eyes?

Sampurna Chattarji

the livid angel who sings violet songs of praise,
there is no other warning except the one inside your chest,
open and you shall see, warm, good-looking,
the season of seasons,
every whiff of narrowness gone, bold, bolder still,
the cher ami from foreign songs,
this foreign body inside my eye blinds me,
like a tubular rose, rising towards the sun.

Sampurna Chattarji

foam on the lips of the sea,
cappuccino foam, foam that is home to horses,
the glandular hand, joints like wires, like sails,
each tiny door in your morning, good,
like the truth of teeth, smiling,
each tool we use to fix the way the day turns,
tightening every screw.

Sampurna Chattarji

Barbara Ellmerer

Every hour the bird strikes. A coo at one, a caw at two. By the time it’s three she is thinking of seed, and the way that wings destroy sleep. She has never seen a woodpigeon or a woodchuck. At four the mockingbird returns. Beaks into minutes. One insistent peck at a time, the trunk riddled. Colour leaves her hair, nests elsewhere. A squawk at six, a shriek at seven. Give me a sec, she says, too hurried to finish that already small word.  Forefinger on neck, she confirms she is alive.

Sampurna Chattarji

René Descartes  ( 1596-1650), Principia Philosophia ( Amsterdam: Ludovicus Elzevirius, 1650), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Alte Drucke und Rara, FF 91, p. 129

(more…)

The rubber glove waits to be filled with flesh
before it enters into soap and water,
into tissue and nerve, into orifice.
Its pinkness is the travesty of dolls.
Rubber boots can be grey verging on blue
before merging into other feet clad only in skin.
The colour of paper keeps changing.
Your knee is a hinge. Then why isn’t your leg
a door that I can open and close behind me,
entering a country the shape of a boot, a glove?

Sampurna Chattarji